Predicting Baseball Players’ On-field Performance with Visual Motion Acuity Tests in a Computer Simulation

Baseball is one of the many sports where visual acuity is felt to play a critical role in the ability to successfully make contact with a ball traveling upwards of 95 miles per hour from a distance of 60 feet, six inches. The correlation between elite baseball players’ visual acuity and their on-field performance has been the subject of many previous research studies. But realistic computer simulation is rarely used in those studies. We have developed a computer graphics program to simulate a pitched baseball at different speeds and rotations, and used it to evaluate the visual abilities of US college Division I level athletes in baseball and softball to correctly identify the spin, seam count, and a projected geometric shape on the simulated baseball. Each athlete who completed the test was then given a set of Visual Acuity Test scores. These results were then correlated with their individual batting statistics. The results showed a statistically significant, positive correlation between the seam recognition ability and many offensive performance indicators such as batting averages, slugging percentages, home runs, RBIs, etc. Spin recognition was trended towards the same conclusion. This study shows that visual simulation can be a viable tool for sports performance analysis and prediction.